"The most common characteristic of all police states is intimidation by surveillance. Citizens know they are being watched and overheard. Their mail is being examined. Their homes can be invaded." ~ Vance Packard

Civil War

"In “Springtime for Jeff Davis and the Confed’racy,” a piece published on his personal blog, April 19, Mr. Timothy Sandefur, a lawyer, author, etc., who likes to mock only southern pronunciation, takes umbrage at my “Civil War and the American Political Economy” (TheFreeman, April 2011). Airing definite opinions on secession and the war of 1861-1865, he has unkind words for paleoconservatives generally and the Mises Institute in particular — a place where I certainly do not work."

Comments

Timothy Sandefur, an ATTORNEY AT LAW, (not a lawyer), wrote: "In all their writings, we witness the pathetic spectacle of professed defenders of liberty arguing in favor of the illegal “right” of a racist despotism to perpetuate its institutions without criticism; of the “right,” that is, to enslave."

That statement is, in the words of Timothy Sandefur himself, "just shockingly ignorant, ...distorted, illogical, and ahistorical", in that I have yet to see any true "defenders of liberty" saying any such thing, let alone "all" of them. Off to a bad start, Timothy Sandefur, lying like that, but what can we expect from an ATTORNEY AT LAW.

Timothy Sandefur, ATTORNEY AT LAW, asserts that "secession was and remains totally illegal", in particular "unilateral secession". Some of us might want to see the particular Amendment to the Constitution, or the so-called law, "made in Pursuance thereof", which makes "secession...totally illegal".

And, if it was NOT, and is NOT, "totally illegal", would it not be an overt act of aggression for a foreign nation to place armed troops on another country's soil [Ft. Sumter] without its express permission?

Would this ATTORNEY AT LAW also say that the secession of the original thirteen united States of America from England "was and remains totally illegal"?

Timothy Sandefur, ATTORNEY AT LAW, also needs to understand the fundamental difference between a Declaration and a Constitution; a Declaration 'creates' nothing, it is simply a lawful and/or legal notice, and in the case The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, specifically, it was a notice of secession.